


Not So Weak That I'm Not Strong

by flipflop_diva



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst and Porn, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Multi, Natasha Needs a Hug, Natasha-centric, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Protective Sam, Protective Steve, The bad guys hurt her not the good guys, Threesome - F/M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-26
Updated: 2015-04-26
Packaged: 2018-03-25 12:32:29
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,684
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3810523
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flipflop_diva/pseuds/flipflop_diva
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She was trained to work in solitary. She was trained to never show weakness. She was trained to never feel love. But no one ever trained her for how to deal with this. (Or, Natasha has to learn to trust Steve and Sam and she's not sure she's happy about it.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Not So Weak That I'm Not Strong

**Author's Note:**

  * For [darkrosaleen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/darkrosaleen/gifts).



> darkrosaleen, I feel like you could be me. For so many of your prompts and likes, I was just like 'Yussssssssssss'. So I tried to fit as many of them in as I could, but I'm not exactly sure how well I accomplished that. I loved writing this for you, though, and I hope you enjoy!

She later isn’t really even sure how she managed to find her phone when she could barely move or summon the concentration needed to press the right button to call, but all she remembers knowing is that he’s the only one she’s sure is close enough to where she is and will drop everything to come find her, even if he doesn’t want to. He answers on the second ring, but her voice feels stuck in her throat and her body aches and the only thing she can do is pant, loudly, as a surge of panic begins to well inside her.

“Natasha? … Natasha? … Nat, what’s wrong?” 

She can hear his voice coming across the line and she summons every last reserve of strength she has to _just say something_ but all she can manage is a tiny squawk that barely sounds human, and then the panic is taking over and she can’t breathe and her heartbeat is pounding in her ears and this is how she’s going to die. After everything — the KGB and SHIELD and aliens and Hydra — this is how it’s going to end, trapped and alone and _so fucking terrified_.

But his voice reaches through the fog in her head and the terror in her mind.

“Natasha!” he says, and it’s his command tone of voice, the one he uses to yell at her (and others. There were always others around) during missions when she’s not doing exactly what he wants her to do (which is usually always. She’s never doing exactly what he wants her to do, never being exactly who he wants her to be). “Don’t hang up your phone! We’ll find you!”

She wants to say something, to tell him to help her, to please find her, to hurry, but she wouldn’t say those things even if she could speak ( _“Don’t ever reveal your weaknesses, Natalia. To anyone.”_ ) and every part of her body is hurting and the world is spinning and she can’t keep her eyes open anymore anyway.

She wonders again if this is the end and decides just before she loses consciousness that maybe it’s better this way.

•••

She hears their voices long before she is able to summon the effort to open her eyes or even lift a finger, and a combination of dread and relief mixes inside her. She knows she isn’t dead but she isn’t sure where she is or what’s going on and she doesn’t have enough energy to do anything about it even if she knew those things.

All she can do is listen to the voices. They start off faint, like they are far away, whispers she can barely hear, words she can’t understand, like they are speaking in a foreign tongue she’s never encountered before.

She thinks she slips back into the blackness because the next time she hears their voices they are calling to her. At least she thinks they are. She feels warm fingers on her cheek, cool fingers wrapped around her wrist, and it takes her awhile to realize they belong to two different people. The warm ones are rough and calloused, like they are used to holding things, to fighting. The cool ones are softer and thinner.

She struggles to open her eyes, to speak, and the fingers on her cheek move to curl into her hair, holding her head in place, but not in the way enemies do when they want to restrain you. This is more gentle, like they want to brace her.

One of the voices starts speaking to her — “Easy. Easy. I’ve got you” — and she realizes it’s Steve seconds before she finally manages to make her eyes flutter open, and relief floods through her like a tidal wave hitting shore because he did find her after all and just the thought of that makes her feel safe (which actually makes her feel scared, because safe is not something she ever wants to feel, but she can barely keep her eyes open so she can’t think about that now).

She blinks in the bright light, momentarily dazed, seeing blond hair and twinkling blue eyes and nothing else but the glare of the sun shining down on her, but he strokes her hair and tells her again she’s okay and it’s okay and finally everything snaps into place.

She’s lying in a bed she recognizes because she’s fallen asleep in it before, the first time the second night Steve was in the hospital after his attack by the Winter Soldier when Sam had forced her to come home with him and not stay in Steve’s room because he claimed she was scaring the nurses by glaring at them constantly (if they had done their jobs better, she wouldn’t have had a reason to glare). Steve is leaning over her, and when she tilts her head a certain way, she can see Sam standing behind him, can feel Sam’s hand wrapped around her wrist, and both men are looking at her with this weird combination of what looks like worry and relief and exhaustion. 

She glances down to see the blankets are pulled up to her chin, but her right arm, lying on top of the bedding, is covered in bandages from her wrist to her elbow. She feels an ache in her chest and a pounding in her head, and she remembers the men and the incessant beating and the bullet in her leg and the feeling of being trapped against them and not being able to move.

A noise escapes her lips, and she thinks it sounds like a whimper, even though she didn’t mean for it to be, and then Steve is soothing her again with soft murmurs and Sam is rubbing her arm, and she feels a bit like she imagines a child would feel and she wants them to stop because she can take care of herself, thank you very much, and she doesn’t need them coddling her ( _“Get up yourself, Natalia. No one is going to do it for you.”_ ). She wants to be angry about it, she wants to get up and flee, disappear forever, but then they are holding her head and helping her to drink and she’s so thirsty and so, so tired and maybe she can just argue with them another day. As she slips back into sleep, she thinks that’s a good idea.

•••

Recovery takes far longer than she would like and far longer than she is comfortable with, and it keeps her on edge day in and day out. It’s not that she hasn’t been injured hundreds of times before, but there is something about being in the SHIELD medical ward with doctors who are distant and professional that makes it feel more like part of the job and less like something personal (not to mention that she somehow always managed to be released long before she should. Fury was never pleased about that, but it’s not her fault people were scared of her).

Clint is the only one in the past she has really let help her, really let see her vulnerable, but he has a life now she’s not really part of, and Sam and Steve are the ones who are here. 

It’s not that they don’t do a good job; it’s more that they do too good a job. They hold her hand and stroke her hair and change her dressings and bathe her carefully and change her clothes and it all feels too familiar and too safe and too intimate and she hates it, because she has spent her whole life not getting too comfortable and not feeling too safe, and she is afraid of what will happen if she forgets that this is not normal life and never will be.

One thing she is grateful for is that neither one of them asks many questions, though she knows they want to. They do ask some, but they are careful and sporadic. “Do you know who hurt you?” (She thought it was Hydra. She’s not really sure anymore.) “Do you want to talk about it?” (No. Definitely no.) “Do you promise not to go after them by yourself?” (She doesn’t give them an answer. They wouldn’t like what she has to say.)

This time it’s just her and Sam. It’s Steve’s turn to get them dinner, to get new bandages and antiseptic for her wounds that haven’t entirely healed yet, so they are sitting on the couch watching people flip houses and waiting for him to get back. Sam’s watching her, casually, from the corner of his eye, and she knows what he’s going to ask long before he asks it. She’s not stupid. She knows they both have wanted to ask it for a long time, but they don’t want to make her uncomfortable. (They don’t realize she learned how not to be uncomfortable a long time ago.)

He keeps his eyes on the TV when he asks. “Did they rape you?”

She keeps her on the TV when she answers. “Yes.” Then she adds, “It’s fine. It’s just sex. It doesn’t mean anything.”

She speaks the truth. Sex has never really meant anything to her. A weapon, a tool, an objective. Every once in awhile it’s been a release, but that is rare. Control is her life. Control keeps her alive. That’s the only part of what happened that bothers her, even though she will never admit it to anyone. She couldn’t control it, and she hated that. The act itself didn’t faze her.

It obviously fazes Sam though because he’s staring at her in a way that would almost make her want to blush if she hadn’t long ago wiped out that reflex too. 

She shrugs at him. “It’s part of the job,” she says, and she wants him to understand so he’ll stop looking at her like that.

He does turn back to the TV, finally, but she feels his hand skim hers a couple minutes later, long after she thought the subject was dropped. 

“It shouldn’t be,” he says.

•••

One nice advantage to her long recovery (that she doesn’t want to be having. She just wants to be healed already) is getting an up close look at the two men who have somehow made their way into her life. She sees it long before they do, the comfort they have with each other, the trust, the respect. The way they look for each other when they walk in a room. The way they spend all their time together, watching the game or jogging around the city or trading war stories.

Sometimes she feels left out, a little envious, which is ridiculous, because she doesn’t do friends or want that. ( _“Don’t ever get attached, Natalia. You are only strong alone.”_ ) But she does like to see them happy.

Steve is sitting next to her on the couch, sketching on a pad, one Saturday evening when she decides to just come out and ask him. She can see he’s drawing a picture of Sam, and the way he captures the spark in his eye, the smirk on his face, more than confirms what she already knows. She leans over to get a better look, purposely letting her hair swish in Steve’s face.

“Natasha,” he warns, and she turns her head to flutter her eyelashes at him.

“What?” she says sweetly, and he pushes her back into her seat with his hand, not hard but with enough force that she knows she bothered him. She smiles and waits for him to turn back to his art before she comments.

“You could have told me,” she says nonchalantly, and he glances at her. 

“Told you what?”

“That you would have preferred I set you up with men.”

Color floods his face quicker than she would have expected, and she almost laughs. “It’s okay, Steve,” she says. “It’s nothing to be embarrassed about.”

“I’m not,” he says. “And I don’t … it’s not …” He stutters off, cheeks still red. She thinks about the photos of Peggy she knows he has hidden around the place, the photos of Bucky that are mixed in with them, and she thinks maybe she understands. It’s not one or the other. He loved them both. Once.

“It’s okay to not be ready,” she says softly, and he looks at her, startled, like he didn’t expect her to be so observant, like he forgot that observation was part of her nature.

She shrugs. He turns back to his sketchbook.

“You have no idea,” she thinks she hears him mumble, and she’s surprised by the sting of pain she gets in her chest. If that is what he said, she knows it’s true. She doesn’t have any idea, of loving someone, of losing them ( _”Love is a weakness, Natalia. You must not be weak.”_ ), so why does she care?

She tells herself she doesn’t and that it’s better that way.

•••

It changes one night about two months after she comes to stay with them. (She doesn’t like to think of it as them rescuing her. It makes her start to doubt things she shouldn’t doubt.) She and Sam are alone once more, again waiting for Steve to get back. He was supposed to have gone out for a few items at the store, but he’s been gone much too long.

Beside her, Sam is restless, fidgeting. She wants to smack him, but finally she turns to him with a glare. He withers under her stare, and suddenly she knows — _knows_ — exactly where Steve went.

She thinks she maybe howls with rage before scrambling off the couch and to the door. She doesn’t have a plan — she doesn’t even have any weapons hidden under her pajamas (Steve and Sam took them away from her before she even regained consciousness, and she hasn’t felt like arguing enough to get them to give them back) — but she knows she can’t let Steve fight her battle for her. The men who attacked her hurt _her_ and it’s her fight. 

(No, she’s not scared to death that he won’t be okay. That isn’t why she’s upset.) 

She makes it almost to the door before she stumbles, her right leg still not really ready to support her after the bullet wound it had taken. Strong arms grab her around her waist and yank her back. She cries out, struggling to keep going, but in this moment, Sam is stronger than her, maneuvering her backward until he falls on to the couch, pulling her down with him.

She wants to jump to her feet, to run for the door again, but the anger and fear and frustration is too much and instead she does something she hasn’t done since she was five years old and ordered to make her first kill: She begins to cry.

Sobs she has no control of wrack her body. She’s shaking and breathless and her fingers clutch desperately at Sam as he tries to pull her against him, but she’s also kicking and punching and through her tears she hears his grunts, but he never lets go of her, never pushes her away.

When Steve limps through the door two hours later, she isn’t crying anymore but she is on the verge of a panic attack. She thinks Sam might be too, as they both are motionless and have been staring at the door for who knows how long. She doesn’t even let Steve get all the way inside before she launches herself at him, literally wrapping her legs around his waist and her arms around his neck.

She’s cursing at him — in Russian, she thinks — and trying to hit him with her fists as he struggles to get her off of him, but she’s furious (but not scared, never scared) and determined and she isn’t letting go. They tumble to the ground and somehow Sam is there, too, but she’s too angry to know if he’s trying to control her or trying to control Steve.

There are angry words and furious glares on all sides and then all of a sudden Steve’s lips are pressed against hers and it’s intense and rough and she hates him _so much_ for what he did and she wants him to know how she feels, so she claws at his chest and feels skin under her nails, and then hands are grabbing her waist and flipping her over and clothes are flying and they are all still shouting and struggling and maybe she’s crying again and when someone comes inside her, she’s not even sure who it is.

They fall asleep in a tangled heap, right there in the living room, naked limbs entwined, pressed against each other, and they wake the same way. She is the first one who speaks, her voice hoarse and softer than she would like.

“Promise us you’ll never do that again,” she whispers to Steve.

Steve turns to look at her. “Promise us you’ll never leave.”

•••

It’s not a promise she can make (it’s not a promise she expected them to ask her for, if she’s honest), but it’s a promise she wishes she could make. The funny thing is, though, that she doesn’t leave. She thinks about it all the time, slipping out at night when they are sleeping, just running past them when they are all snuggled on the couch watching movies.

But she doesn’t. She tells herself it’s because she has nowhere else to go, that she’s safer being with them, that’s it’s really just the most reasonable option at this moment.

She doesn’t think about the way she feels when Steve kisses her good morning or how Sam runs his hand over her head before she falls asleep. She doesn’t think about missing them or how it would be to survive without them. None of that matters. ( _”Attachments are weakness, Natalia. You are not weak.”_ )

They have sex more regularly now. No one really talks about it, but all they accept it. It’s different from the sex she has had in the past. It almost feels like it should mean something.

She keeps her guard up, though, and doesn’t ever let them get too comfortable. She watches when they come and thinks they look beautiful but she pushes them away, distracts them with her mouth, when they try to get too close, when they put their fingers or their mouths between her legs.

They ask her about it one night. She blames it on the vodka that she answers.

“Sex is about control,” she tells them. She doesn’t tell them she’s never really had an orgasm. She doesn’t tell them she can’t let anyone do something to her she might not be able to control. But they are looking at her like they feel pity for her and she scowls at them.

“Don’t look at me like that,” she says. “It’s not like I don’t enjoy it. It just is what it is.”

It’s Sam who speaks. He shakes his head, much as he did the day she told him they had raped her. “No, it’s not,” he whispers.

•••

She doesn’t understand what’s happening at first. She thinks it’s just their usual routine. Until she realizes their touch is too gentle and the way they remove her clothes is too tender and then her head is across Steve’s lap and Sam’s fingers are between her legs and she is staring at them in a mixture of shock and possibly hurt because she told them she doesn’t like this.

But Steve has an arm wrapped tight around her, holding her against him, like he can keep her safe from anything, and his other hand is stroking over her arms and her stomach and her breasts and he glances at Sam before whispering to her, “If you say no, we’ll stop. But we’re asking you to trust us.”

She thinks about saying no, thinks she _should_ say no (“ _You must always be in control, Natalia. There is no other choice._ ”), but she realizes with a start that she _does_ trust them and she is partly curious (and isn’t knowledge power? So shouldn’t she know?), so she nods and lets Sam spread her legs with his hands and then gasps slightly when his tongue touches her clit.

Steve and Sam work together, Sam’s tongue and fingers finding all the spots that make her jump and twitch while Steve soothes her with his hands and his words. She feels something pooling in her stomach and it’s unlike anything she’s ever felt before, and she tilts her head to stare at Steve, still uncertain about what she’s agreed to.

She feels Sam’s motions start to speed up, feels her legs start to grow numb, but it’s Steve’s eyes only that she sees, those wide blue eyes that are looking at her like they trust her, like they respect her, like they _love_ her, and when Steve whispers in her ear, “Just let go, Natasha, we’ve got you,” for the first time in her life she does.

•••

She lies between them when they are finished, both their hands folded together over her stomach. She tries to remember how she got here — not in this minute but in general — what she did to deserve this, but she doesn’t know.

She closes her eyes and reaches for their hands, waits till she feels both of their fingers entwined with hers.

“I love you,” Steve murmurs into her hair. 

“I love you,” Sam murmurs into the skin of her arm.

Her chest aches. Her breath speeds up. She tightens her grip on both of them.

She wants to say thank you. Actually, she wants to say so much more than that, but she’s not there yet and those words can’t come. Maybe they can’t ever come. After all, those words aren’t who she is.

She settles for the next best thing.

“I promise I won’t leave,” she whispers just before she falls asleep.

She hopes they know what she’s trying to say. She thinks maybe they do.


End file.
